July 11, 2014

Rift widens between Kurds and Iraqi government

The New York Times reports the dangerous struggle between the leadership of Iraq and the country’s Kurdish minority intensified Friday, as the Kurds seized two oil production facilities in Kirkuk Province and the prime minister announced that he was appointing a temporary replacement for the foreign minister. The prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, moved to replace the current foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, with Hussain Shahristani, a Shiite from Maliki’s bloc. Maliki was responding to a decision by Zebari and other Kurdish cabinet members to boycott cabinet meetings in protest of Maliki’s searing criticism of the Kurds this week. In a televised address on Wednesday, Maliki charged that the Kurds were harboring Sunni militant opponents of the central government and were even allowing members of the group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which swept through northern Iraq in June, to organize operations from Kurdistan.